Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

It's getting on for midnight, so we can proceed with a new Magic Monday. Ask me anything about occultism and I'll do my best to answer it. Any question received by midnight Monday Eastern time will get an answer. (Please note:  Any question received after then will not get an answer, and in fact will just be deleted. I've been getting an increasing number of people trying to post after these are closed, so will have to draw a harder line than before.) If you're in a hurry, or suspect you may be the 143,916th person to ask a question, please check out the very rough version 1.0 of The Magic Monday FAQ here.

The image?  That's the fifteenth card in The Sacred Geometry Oracle. Card 15, The Tetrahedron, when upright tells you that there's plenty of energy in the situation which you can use; when reversed, it means that there's too much energy in the situation and your plans may be disrupted by it. The waves on the sides of the image tell you that this card belongs to the second third of the oracle, which corresponds to Gwyar, the principle of fluidity and change. 

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And don't forget to look up your Pangalactic New Age Soul Signature at CosmicOom.com.

With that said, have at it!

***This Magic Monday is now closed. See you next week!***

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

a) In Circles of Power, you suggest that you can use the elemental rituals of opening and closing as a form of imitation. Could you do something similar with the Ritual of the Hexagram, in planetary forms? Would using the invoking ritual of each planet in the morning, and the banishing ritual in the evening for a week or two, or perhaps four weeks, be a good way to begin to initiate myself into the realm of astrological magic?

b) You give the Vibratory Formula of the Middle Pillar in the same book, and I'm curious about one option for use of it: could it be used to bring the energies of the spheres into focus and work my way up the tree? Use it with Malkuth, invoking ADNI HARTZ, a set number of times (say seven), then on to Yesod, invoking ShDI AL ChI the same way, and then so on up the tree?

I'd figure this could be done perhaps once a week, which would take a little less than two months a sphere; and this seems like it could be a good way to begin to bring these energies into focus, and into my life, as well as getting a good sense of how the vibratory formula works. Does this seem like a workable option to you?

c) I've been looking into Plutonian phenomena, and have realized they have a stage in their life cycle you didn't discuss in The Twilight of Pluto: namely, on the way out they turn on themselves and implode messily in a circular firing squad. This seems to be happening now for the Plutonian in general: the feud between Big Tech and the Mass Media, or the way that the reaction to the virus which shall not be named has caused severe, grievous harm to a lot of Plutonian phenomena.

This seems to me to imply that the remaining period of Pluto fading out is going to see the dwindling Plutonian phenomena which are not converted into Neptunian fantasies, obliterated by Saturnine limits, or taken in by any other planet, will turn on each other and messily destroy each other. Does this seem likely to you?

d) Would the day and hour of Jupiter be a good one for a long distance move? Would the moment that matters be the moment I leave my current home for good?

[ecosophia]

1) Yes, you could do that. Perform the invoking hexagram ritual, meditate on the planet, and then perform the banishing ritual, cycling through all the planets on their respective days of the week; do it for seven weeks, and you should do a very good job of attuning yourself to the planetary energies.

2) Good. Not everyone catches onto that implication. Yes, it can very definitely be used that way.

3) That's a possibility, though Plutonian phenomena also just fade out quietly -- think of the way that Freudian psychotherapy has deflated with a minimum of fuss (outside its own increasingly marginal circles, that is).

4) Depending on what you want to achieve, Jupiter, Venus, the Sun, or Mercury sould be suitable. The day you leave is worth electing, but so is the day you move into your new place.

[jprussell]

Good Evening,

A happy and blessed Alban Eiler/Spring Equinox to you and the commentariat! Thanks very much as always for hosting this invaluable resource.

1) When awakening either of the two currents following the ritual in the DMH, do you trace the pentagram as if on a wall in front of you, rising up vertically from the altar, so that the point is facing either straight down to the ground or straight up into the sky, or do you trace it as if on the surface of the altar itself, so that the point is facing either toward you to the north or away from you to the south?

2) I see in a previous post (https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/119649.html?thread=13787489#cmt13787489) that you don't have a strong opinion on which translation(s) of the Mabinogion are best for esoteric purposes, but short of picking up a bit of Welsh and digging into the original with a dictionary, do you have recommendations for resources for making the most out of meditations on it? I have the Sioned Davies translation, which is pleasantly readable, but the footnotes don't provide as many translations of people & place names or their mythological antecedents as I would prefer.

3) Working through the DMH (about 8 months in), I have somewhat "bounced off" doing the SOP with an external, practical end - my divinations have come up ambivalent at best, whereas divination, prayer, and meditation have pointed me toward a self-targeted intent, scrying the Elemental gates, and awakening the currents. Is this within the normal scope of variation, or might it suggest anything I need to work on?

Cheers,
Jeff

[ecosophia]

1) As though it's on the wall in front of you.

2) A good Welsh dictionary really is helpful. There are some notes in The Dolmen Arch on names of people and places, and the paperback edition should be out soon.

3) It's well within the normal range.

Filtering biases

[(Anonymous)]

For awhile now several people on the forum were writing about feeling like there were going to be a mass of people dying. Often these vibes were attributed to the most recent usual suspect. Around the same time frame the “special operation” in Ukraine started. Could we have been tuning into that vibe and then due to our own biases misinterpreted the whole thing.

How would you go about divining for biases?

Re: Filtering biases

[ecosophia]

1) That's a possibility. On the other hand, the death rate in the Russo-Ukraine war so far isn't out of the ordinary for modern warfare (and there have been wars going on in various corners of the world all along), and the usual suspect isn't exactly off the hook yet.

2) That's always a challenge with any clairvoyant or divinatory information! I don't know of a universally reliable way to do that, which is why I make such a point of being tentative about such predictions.

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you, JPRussell, and backatcha! And likewise to everyone else!

Princess Cutekitten 🌸🌷🌱

[brenainn]

So, I had a professional tarot reading done. I was trying to figure out the identity of a then-unknown deity that had begun making his presence known. Her reading said it was Loki. I was rather surprised by this. Her other readings for me have been very spot on and accurate, so I am assuming there is something to this Loki reading. On top of that, shortly after meditating a bit on Loki, I had a mystical experience where I intensely sensed Loki's presence and was able to quickly write a respectable poem or prayer to Loki. I mention that because I don't really have the ability to come up with something so quickly.

I'm not sure what to do. I've heard that Loki is a trickster deity, and I'm not sure to approach such a god. I tried some of my own tarot spreads to get a clearer answer but my readings have been nonsensical so far. Do you have any advice or suggestions? As always, I'd enjoy hearing the commentariat's thoughts, too.

[ecosophia]

Hmm. It's possible that she's quite correct -- the nonsensical readings would certainly bear that out! -- but it's worth remembering that you don't have to establish a devotion to every deity who shows up. The people I know who've taken up the worship of Loki have pretty consistently turned into world-class jerks; if that doesn't appeal to you, you can consider respectfully declining the contact, and calling on your other connections for balance and protection.

[(Anonymous)]

Hey JMG.

I bought my first pendulum last week, used it briefly for two days, and realized it wasn't the right one for me. I'm planning on exchanging it, and would like to know how to remove whatever amount of my energy is on it before it ends up being someone else's.

Cheers.

[ecosophia]

Wash it in cold salt water and then leave it in direct sunlight (i.e., not filtered through window glass) for an hour or two. That should do the job.

Guardian Angels

[(Anonymous)]

In the latest episode of his podcast The Hermetic Hour, Poke Runyon stated that each person has three guardian angels: the angel of one's ascendant, the angel of the planet that rules the ascendant - which are both specific to the present lifetime - and the angel that accompanies one throughout all one's lives.

Supposing this is true, how does one determine who is the angel of one's ascendant? Is there some tradition for ascertaining this? Does it correspond to the particular degree in which the ascendant is located?

I suppose that the planet that rules the ascendant is the planet whose house is the sign in which the ascendant is located. Assuming this to be so, can the name of the angel be known? For example, in the case of Jupiter, would the angel be Tzadkiel, or would it be another in the same lineage but more personal to the individual? In that case, how would I find that out for myself?

For the angel that guides one through all lifetimes, is there a way to discover that spirit's nature or name, other than direct contact?

If you can recommend a good online source for this, I'd be glad to find it and study up. As you might guess, I'm giving serious consideration to something like the Abramelin operation and have obtained a book on that process designed for pagans.

For anyone who wishes to check out the podcast, it's at BlogTalkRadio[dot]com[slash]the-hermetic-hour. Poke is a lot of fund and well worth listening to.

Re: Guardian Angels

[ecosophia]

There are tables in some of the old books of magic for calculating the name of the angel who rules your ascendant. I think Agrippa gives one in the third of his Three Books, and some of the other Renaissance magical literature does the same. My book The Art and Practice of Geomancy gives a geomantic method to do the same thing, using a method I found in one of John Heydon's books.

The angel of the planet is the standard planetary angel, so Sachiel for Jupiter and so on. (Again, Agrippa or any of the other classic texts likns these.) The angel that guides you through all your lives, as far as I know, you can only learn about by contacting. The angel of your ascendant and the angel of your ruling planet, on the other hand, you can know about in advance, and working with them can get you in contact with the third angel.

The Creator God and the Ineffable One

[(Anonymous)]

I've been following the essays of John Gilbert that you've published thus far. They contain much food for thought. In particular, I am wondering what is the relationship, if any, between a creator god and the ineffable One? I can conceive of the gods of a polytheistic pantheon as emanating from the One, but am not sure where a creator god fits in here. Any thoughts?

If any particular author is especially apposite here - Porphyry, Iamblichus, Plotinus, Hermes Trismegistus, perhaps - it would be nice to know; and also in which works and (if possible) in which chapters or passages the theme is addressed, in the event you happen to recollect such details.

Re: The Creator God and the Ineffable One

[ecosophia]

The creator god in polytheist faiths is simply one of the gods who has the job of making stuff: Ptah in Egyptian mythology, for example. He's not the Great Big God of monotheism, just the deity who happens to make worlds. In some traditions, for example the Norse one, the job's shared out among three gods, Odin, Vili, and Ve:

Then Bur's sons lifted | the level land,
Mithgarth the mighty | there they made;
The sun from the south | warmed the stones of earth,
And green was the ground | with growing leeks.

In the Neoplatonist vision, the gods are the first emanations from the One, the powers of the Noetic world, and each reflects the One in a distinct way -- so the love-goddess reflects the One as loving union, and so on. The creator god, the craftsman who makes the world, reflects the One as bringing things into being. There's something in Proclus about this, but I'm sorry to say I don't remember where.

[emmanuelg]

Hi JMG & Commentariat--
A number of months ago, I made a wooden toy gift for a coworker who had found another job. I called it "The Definitive Universal Fountain of Unusual Smartness (DUFOUS)," essentially a wooden spinner that could land on numbers 1 to 12, and a paper of random answers that I had written down. It was meant to be a gag gift, just for fun.
Long story short, the "DUFOUS" and its list of answers actually seems to provide appropriate answers and occasionally good advice.
1) Is it possible for people involved in occult study and practices to make non-working divination systems-- in effect placebo divination systems? (The DUFOUS says, "Maybe not...")
2) Could the DUFOUS be dangerous in some way, and if so, any advice on how to be sure it is beneficial if not harmless?

Thanks for hosting this discussion list, and thanks to all who put in such fascinating questions and comments!

--Emmanuel G /Tangerine Tangential Owl

Full story for the compulsively interested:

https://emmanuelg.dreamwidth.org/8987.html

[ecosophia]

Funny! But not at all surprising. Any system of random answer generation, including the Magic 8-Ball, taps into the flow of synchronicity and can thus give meaningful answers. The only way it can become dangerous is if the user relies on it to the exclusion of common sense -- but that's an issue with any method of divination.

Memphis Rap Sigils

[(Anonymous)]

Are you familiar with the Memphis Rap Sigils, and if you what are your thoughts on this phenomenon?

*DARK CONTENT WARNING*
https://forum.agoraroad.com/index.php?threads/memphis-rap-sigils.3783/

Essentially the idea is that the 90's underground rap scene in Memphis was involved in extreme left hand path occultism and imbued their cassette tapes with audio sigils recorded during ahem *evil* sacrificial rituals.

I'm curious how sound the occult philosophy is here. It's posited that the dark energies are only present on the original physical cassette tapes and that a digital recording should have no effect.

The music certainly has a sinister vibe to it... and several of the more prominent members of this scene were more or less confirmed to be involved in some type of occult activity.

Re: Memphis Rap Sigils

[ecosophia]

I've encountered the concept -- remember that I lurk on the chans from time to time, to find out what's crawling around on the underbelly of modern culture. My take is pretty close to the one sketched out in this article...

https://www.avclub.com/these-memphis-rap-tapes-aren-t-actually-haunted-but-th-1839418664

...that is, no, there's not any serious magic going on in them, just a bunch of very capable horrorcore rap that's become the center of a lively urban legend. (Talking up the sinister powers of the original cassettes also helps boost their prices, which iirc are already stratospheric these days due to the enthusiasm of collectors.) That said, if enough people believe in the urban legend, then coincidences will start swinging that way...

Meditation Practice

[(Anonymous)]

Greetings!

When doing my meditations on the tarot (Levi text), I do a banishing (LBRP), meditation, banishing, or should I be doing a banishing, evoking, meditation, banishing?

I am currently studying the Levi text as well as LRM and POW, but I feel a very strong need to go outdoors to do magic ritual but I'm not sure what to do. I have a very strong feeling that I want to do the celtic golden dawn course, but I've already started on the kabalistic training which I need to complete first.

When walking in the park one day, I found a small wooden children's toy. It was a cube with the letters HU on it and the number 3. I there any way I can connect with the trees and include them as part of my kabalistic practice?

Many Thanks.

Murky Insipid Eggplant

Re: Meditation Practice

[ecosophia]

1) Just do a banishing and then a meditation. You don't need to banish afterwards.

2) Good. Always finish one set of practices before beginning anohter.

3) A fine synchronicity! Yes, you should certainly take up some form of Druidry, since Hu Gadarn is the great Druid god of Welsh tradition, and he's associated with the three rays of light. As for connecting with the trees, you'll find instructions for that in my book The Celtic Golden Dawn.

[australiandreamer]

So apparently on March 25th the Vatican is planning to consecrate Russia and the Ukraine … based on the initial Fatima vision. Apparently (I am in no wise a RC scholar) the thrust of the Fatima “vision” was that the subsequent fate of the world mystically depended on the “consecration of Russia” to the heart of Virgin Mary, because otherwise “Russia’s errors” would spread throughout the world. This vision was back in 1917 so the error de jure of the time would have been Bolshevik Atheism. Quoting from an article on the subject “The overwhelming majority of Christians in Russia and the Ukraine are Eastern Orthodox and Vatican, Roman Catholic mumbo-jumbo is not even on their radar. It does not concern or affect them in the least. A legitimate side question, of course, is what gives the Pope and the Vatican the right to “consecrate” millions of souls who are not even affiliated with them? Would it not be polite to at least ask for their consent? It is probably late at this point to organize a consecration referendum in the lucky candidate countries because March 25 is too close, but the sheer arrogance of designating subjects for religious ritual without their consent is indeed stunning. And typical, one is tempted to add.”

In terms of blowback would that be mainly just on the guys actually performing the ritual, or extend to those supporting it, folks Fatima focused, or RCs in general? And if you, the one doing the ritual, were trying to apply that to others and you yourself were not ‘consecrated to the heart of the Virgin’ would that make a difference to potential feedback options (not to mention only taking 105 years to obey the injunction!)

(addendum – apparently they already consecrated the whole world back in 1984)

Maybe if you named your sources???

[homeopathic_meditations]

Cannot tell otherwise, but given the blatant lie that RC mumbo-jumbo is incomprehensible to Eastern Orthodox Christians, I will say this looks like a hit piece from an angry atheist type: the shallowness in understanding of the issue at hand is only comparable to the malice with which the event is cast in the worse possible light.

I will try to outline this from the perspective of Sacramental Christian Churches. You may or may not accept the objective correctness of the argument, but if you are to pass moral judgements of the actors you must take their internal figurations and motivations.

1. Consecrating Russia and Ukraine should be understood as Consecrating Russian and Ukrainian Churches, individual Christians and that which is legitimally of them. Territory, society, etc, is only consecrated in as much as it is part of the Christian population living there. AFAIK, non Christian nationals will not be directly affected (though they will get to benefit to the degree that their Christian neighbors will be affected).

2. To understand what "consecrating" means, I will provide this source. I accept the wording is concerning, but if you are not comfortable with that I do no think you should call yourself a Christian. To summarize, in the words of Pope Pio XII: "[The Consecration] tends essentially to union with Jesus, under the guidance of Mary". Here I must add that the consecration is given strength because Eastern Orthodox Churches do pay hyperdulia to the Theotokos. It is not the same thing as consecrating, let's say the Bible Belt to Her Hearth. The connection is already there, so no overstepping from that angle.

3. No referendum is needed. Form within the Christian worldview, the Church is a hierarchical structure where mere membership provide implicit consent to be the subject of beneficent rituals whenever your superiors see fit. This goes down to the nuclear family level, where parents retain authority to bless and pray for their children (but not to mess in their lives) even after they have reached their legal majorities. IMHO, the ultimate heads of those Churches are the Patriarch of Moscow and Kiev, respectively... but the RCC begs to differ.

4. The relationship between Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches does exist. It is real and acknowledged by both parties, but the nature of the relationship is at dispute. The Vatican sees itself as the middle-aged parent in a strained relationship with young adult children: they were rebellious once, but hopefully they'll come around to see the parent, for all its flaws, as ultimately caring. The Moscow and Kiev Patriarchates see themselves as struggling with a nosy elder sibling that kept them under their thumb as children and now cannot get around to accept they all live independent lives. Yes, it is messy, but it is not the same as if a total stranger like me went around assaulting your spiritual life from the other side of the globe. IMHO, if the Pope saw fit to perform this ritual, the proper way should have been to contact the Patriarchs and try to make this an ecumenical effort. So, yes, there is an overstepping here, but not as terrible as originally envisioned.

5. The majority of the blow-back will come, in my not so humble opinion, from the fact that the Fatima Mysteries are being put to the service of crass politics. In this we should see the Vatican not as either the Holy See or one of the Ancient Patriarchates, but as an unofficial member of the European Union. I understand that we are all concerned of what is to come from this war, and that most rank and file Catholics think they are helping to bring peace to the World, but the political dimension cannot and should not be ignored.

Wheel of life in the southern hemisphere

[sea_spray]

Hi JMG

Are there any issues with flipping the wheel of life as shown in the DMH north/south to better fit the southern hemisphere, specifically in relation to the circle of stones for a grove.

Thanks!

Sea spray

Re: Wheel of life in the southern hemisphere

[ecosophia]

You'll have to experiment. The whole question of how and whether to adapt rituals to the southern hemisphere is exceedingly vexed, and since I've never been there I can't offer any personal experience as a guide.

FHR Candidate °

[miow]

Dear JMG
I am now in week 2 of following the very much appreciated instructions of the Fellowship you are posting, and this means I am adding in the summoning of Air. Step 1 of summoning the elements. I do my meditation and divination at the same time as the SOP. My question is, do I close the SOP beforehand? Or after meditating and divination?

Re: FHR Candidate °

[ecosophia]

You do the whole SoP before you do any of the other things, so you close the SoP first, then sit down to meditate et al.

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,

I hope you are doing well! I have two questions for today, if I may:

1) I've noticed that there are certain days where the whole family, that is myself, wife and children seems to be just worn out and tired without any apparent reason. Usually, we wake up tired and with a rather bad mood. At first I thought it was related to lunar phases as it seemed to happen around the full moon, that is shortly before or shortly after. But this does not seem to be the case and those one or two days of tiredness seem to shift through the lunar phases like the full moon shifts through the months.

Do you have any idea, what this phenomenon could be related to, astrologically or otherwise - or more generally any advice on what I should look out for to find out?

2) About being silent: I wondered if part of the problem is that by verbalizing your thoughts / intentions / actions you conceptualize them into a certain form. If I may use quantum mechanics as an analogy: If you leave a quantum object, say an atom or an ensemble of atoms alone, they can develop all those strange quantum phenomena like non-locality, weird interactions and entanglement, being at many places or in many states at once, etc. By measuring (i.e. "conceptualizing") you destroy all this and force them in a certain state, position, etc. If you start an experiment appropriately and choose the moment for your measurement correctly, you can accomplish really weird things with quantum objects. If you don't, or if your setup is poorly insulated from the environment, well, you don't. That's the trick.

Would you say, that this is part of the problem of speaking too much? That you permanently force everything that's behind the conceptualized, material world into poorly designed forms at the wrong moment?

Thanks!
Nachtgurke

[ecosophia]

1) You might keep a diary for a few months, noting everything from moon phase and sign through what your family is eating to stuff happening in the neighborhood, and see if you can find any common threads.

2) Good. Yes, that's one part of it.

[orathbone]

Hi. I was wondering what the karmic implications of investing in stocks and shares are. Does the investor have to take some karmic responsibility for bad actions a company takes. I can see weapons makers are a bad idea but what about energy companies or banks. Is in fact investing in the stock exchange not a good idea at all? Are index trackers more useful? Many thanks for your thoughts on this. O

[ecosophia]

Owning shares in a company is owning part of the company, so yes, the karma comes with it. It's as though you hired somebody, in an arrangement where you know you're not going to have any supervision over them; they'd get most of the karma but you'd get some. That doesn't mean that owning stocks is a bad idea -- it means that you need to do your ethical due diligence, and choose companies in businesses that make good ethical sense to you. There are plenty of small- to mid-cap companies that provide useful goods and services to people who need those things, and investing in those can be a souce of good karma. Let's say you find a company that employs people at a living wage and provides a service that people need; investing in that company would be helping people get good jobs and necessary services, and that'll bring you good karma as well as whatever dividends and capital gains you receive.

[stcathalexandria]

Reporting back on the moving of the bed to the north wall....felt like I was sleeping with my head on a rock (in a good way) for the first two nights. Took several nights to get used to it. It was disconcerting only in that I realized I was used to the feeling of falling asleep on a non-solid surface. After a week I can say that I feel more rested when I wake up and I only sleep about 6 hours a night.

The other welcome change is the lifting of a generalized anxiety and feeling of being squashed or squeezed. It could be the OSA work (just completed lesson 5 and set some intentions for my life), or the bed relocation, or the continual LBRP and MP in the morning (going on 16 months of the practice). I've also taken a break from social media, particularly Twitter, starting March 1st which coincidentally was about the start of the Ukraine mess. Not seeing other people's anxieties and virtue signaling is certainly helping!

Now I'm finally feel like I can attune to the divine. Before it felt like trying to have a conversation in front of the speakers at a concert. I didn't realize how loud the noise was in my head though. Before last week I would have told people I was okie dokie and just needed to work harder.

All this to say thank you for posting the OSA work and thank you for being here to answer questions. You've provided an opening to a level of peace inside myself that I didn't even know was possible.

I also realize that I wouldn't have taken the leap to start any magical practice if it wasn't for covid. This has me thankful in a way for covid, but I don't want to be thankful for covid and the whole mess around it. Hoping to find a better word for it!

Monochrome Barmy Owl

[ecosophia]

I'm glad to hear this! Having the head of the bed to the north is something I learned about from Rosicrucian sources; it's not an option for everyone, but it helps. I'm also very pleased to hear about the lessened anxiety and pressure; I suspect all of the things you're doing are contributing to it, but less social media is probably out in front.

As for the Covid business, hard times do that. I've taken advantage of the shutdown to kick my practices into a higher gear, with good results; it sucks that it took a pandemic to make that the obvious choice, but it seems to be working.

Q

[(Anonymous)]

Dear JMG,

I've written here before about my Saturn return that just happened. Last 5 years have absolutely pummelled me, extreme events that have caused health issues despite my relatively young age. Things are on the mend as I have taken control of many difficult situations, but my body is definitely still weak, fatigues easily, and recovers slowly (even from a recent surgery). My career how ever is very demanding (saturn 10th) so I'm caught in the middle, and I need to get stronger faster.

I wanted to get your advice on what things I can read/learn to expedite the process of healing, and any practices to access help from the divine I could take up that would serve me well lifelong. I do pray regularly and visit the local temple and donate weekly, but any additional advice is appreciated.(I do all the usual stuff for my material and etheric— massages, time under the sun, exercise, ayurveda etc; they have been helpful).

Re: Q

[ecosophia]

If you've already got a good relation with the divine by way of prayer and weekly temple worship, I'm going to suggest that you talk to capable professional clergy in your own faith rather than to me. They can suggest practices that are already integrated with your existing spirituality, which I almost certainly cannot.

Weird vibes in the American woods?

[lukedodson]

Hi JMG,

Happy Alban Eiler to you and the commentariat!

I have seen a few comments on the esoteric end of Twitter to the effect that there are strange, hostile energies in the North American wilderness, that walking in the woodlands makes one feel unwelcome, and even that there has been an unusual concentration of 'wendigo'-type entities haunting the American landscape for millennia, more so than other regions of the world.

Although North America is my fatherland, I grew up in Britain, and haven't spent nearly enough time in the American wilds to corroborate these anecdotal impressions. I'd be interested to hear any thoughts from yourself and the rest of the commentariat.

Speculating off the top of my head, I could suggest that the 'wendigo' spirits perhaps linger from times of great hardship in hunger in the frozen north and arid south-west, and that the hostility that these commentators experience has more to do with the traumatic effect of colonization and the dramatic loss of biodiversity and forest cover in a relatively short space of time.

Thanks!

Luke

Re: Weird vibes in the American woods?

[ecosophia]

I'm not at all sure what to say, because I've literally never had that experience. Even before I became a Druid, being out in the woods always felt like coming home. In the years since then, of course, I've developed the capacity to perceive spiritual beings, and there are plenty of those in the wilderness but they're not hostile -- many are shy and wary of humans, but once they realize that I can see them and I'm not going to hassle them, we get along fine (which usually amounts to them going about their business and me going about mine).

Planetary Days

[(Anonymous)]

Do you happen to know of any principle for why the planetary days are ordered the way they are, other than that it works? They aren't in order of distance from the sun or from the earth, and converting them to their numerology equivalents didn't help either. (There are sort of patterns in their numbers, but all of the ones I saw broken down in at least one spot.)

I'm asking because of something you've mentioned in past about future civilization potentially using a 9-day week. If we could discern a principle underlying the current calendar we might be able to predict the potential candidates for a 9-day week, even if we don't know yet it would align to the current week (i.e., which of the nine days does today correspond to?).

Thanks

-- Amaranth Bulbous Crow

Re: Planetary Days

[brendhelm]

Not JMG but:

The days are ordered the way they are because it's what naturally follows from the planetary hours, which are ordered in reverse order from the distance as seen from Earth: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon, then start over. If you set sunrise (planetary hour 1) on a particular day as the Sun, then the 8th, 15th, and 22nd are also the Sun. Therefore the 23rd hour is Venus, the 24th is Mercury, and the 25th - i.e., the first hour of the new day - is the Moon.

Do this repeatedly until you get the first hour of the day belonging to the Sun again, and you have our familiar 7-day week in its conventional order.

This works mathematically because 24/7 is an irreducible fraction. It doesn't work with a 9-day week, though, because 24/9 reduces to 8/3. If you kept the day at 24 hours, you'd end up repeating the same sunrise hour on a 3-day cycle, not a 9-day one.

JMG has suggested in The Twilight of Pluto that one possible solution would simply be to let the planetary days be the planets, that is, remove the Sun and Moon from the week in place of Uranus and Neptune. The week would then run Neptune - Jupiter - Mercury - Saturn - Venus - Uranus - Mars. Another option would be to change the number of hours in a day - literally anything not divisible by 3 would work.

[(Anonymous)]

I like very much the tehraedron...

-A Spaniard.

[ecosophia]

Do you have a fiery personality? ;-)

[(Anonymous)]

Hello dear JMG,

Thank you for hosting Magic Monday (and the forum, too).

The image selected for this week prompts my question. What happens if you imagine yourself centered within two tetrahedrons, one pointing up, and one pointing down?

And would you recommend doing such a thing?

Magenta Chattering Cactus

[ecosophia]

1) You get some practice visualizing geometrical forms around yourself.

2) If you want to, sure, but you might want to alternate that with visualizing yourself inside a cube, an octahedron, a dodecahedron, an icosahedron, and a sphere, just to get a more thorough workout. (You can throw in the Archimedean solids if you really want to go to town; the spirit of Bucky Fuller will doubtless be pleased if you make a special effort to work with the cuboctahedron!)

Ahem. Yes, I know that Bernard Perona aka Drunvalo Melchizedek has built up an extensive personal mythology around that double tetrahedron; it's not something that interests me greatly, as I work with older and more traditional modes of sacred geometry, but if it turns your crank, by all means.

Celtic Golden Dawn Series

[(Anonymous)]

Good morning, JMG. I see that the Litany of the Tree of Life is now available, so I will be picking that up soon. My question is, do you have any other books in mind for the Celtic Golden Dawn series?

I just got the new Sacred Geometry Oracle. The simple artwork is so much better than the original.

As always, thank you for MMs.

Re: Celtic Golden Dawn Series

[ecosophia]

1) Yes, I've got a volume outlined with the working title The Celtic Cabala, which will include history, theory, and a sequence of Sphere workings using ritual and scrying to attune to the spheres of the Tree. I'm not sure when it'll be on the top of the stack, however.

2) Thank you!

Syncretism in the SOP

[(Anonymous)]

Dear JMG,

Is it possible to integrate deities from other pantheons into an SOP ritual that already uses one set of divinities? For example, if I have been using mainly Gaelic/Irish Godnames, but wanted to import a Welsh divinity or two from another pantheon that I am quite fond of, could this be done in a responsible manner?

Re: Syncretism in the SOP

[ecosophia]

I really don't recommend this, but you can always do divination and see if it's appropriate for you.

Intuition

[abrahamjpalma]

Hello, jmg.
Just want to say big thanks.

Learning to read the scrying has been so helpful. First, the day before my father died, my vision kind of showed this time it was for real.

Now, I had something important to do in another city, but the scrying told me to stay and embrace my children. Two days later my new baby was born. I'm so glad I didn't move.

Re: Intuition

[ecosophia]

You're most welcome, and I'm delighted that it's helped you.